A grammar of Limilngan: A language of the Mary River region, by Mark Harvey PDF

This grammar offers an outline of Limilngan, a formerly undescribed and now extinct language of northern Australia. Australian languages often express a excessive measure of structural similarity to each other. Limilngan exhibits a few of the universal Australian styles, yet in different components it diverges considerably from them. It has a regular Australian phonological stock, bit its phonotactic styles are strange. a few heterorganic clusters comparable to /kb/ are of markedly better frequency than homorganic clusters reminiscent of /nd/. Like a few Australian languages, Limilngan has many vowel-initial morphemes. even though, traditionally those consequence from lenition and never from preliminary shedding as somewhere else in Australia.

Like many northern languages, it has advanced platforms of either prefixation and suffixation to nominals and verbs. Prefixation offers information regarding nominal type (four classes), temper, and pronominal cross-reference (subject and objects). Suffixation offers information regarding case, annoying and point. Limilngan differs from such a lot Australian languages in significant volume of its morphology is unproductive, displaying complicated and abnormal allomorphic variation.

Limilngan is like such a lot Australian languages in that it can be defined as a loose note order language. even though, note order isn't really for free and strictly ordered phrasal compounding constructions are major (e.g. within the formation of denominal verbs).

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Extra resources for A grammar of Limilngan: A language of the Mary River region, Northern Territory, Australia

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The paradigm of 'to get up' (Appendix D). Only a small proportion of the nominal lexicon takes root-level affixation. 4). Stress placement in word forms from these classes fol lows the principles already described for verbs. There is a stress on the first syllable of the root and thereafter each alternate syllable also bears a stress, subject to the proviso that final syllables do not bear a stress. The final stress is the primary stress. Nominal prefixes are monosyllabic, and consequently do not normally bear stress.

There are twelve trisyllables, where the second syllable is closed by a hetero-organic stop. Only two of these have stress on the second syllable. 34 Mark Harvey (2-62) iwitjbi uwitjbi nearly red ochre [Iwicpi] [uicpi] There are eight trisyl labic words with penultimate stress, where the second syJlable is open. (2-63) alkgiji dinngagi iwirli lurrilyarr luwarli umamung urlanginy uwagi behind already, before tree sp. ; digging stick; snake sp. brolga rat liver lower arm fire [ a lkkIfi] [dml)agi] [IWIli] [lurIAar] [Iuali] [ umarWl)] [ ulal)ip] [uagi] The motivations for penultimate stress in these forms are not clear.

The Past Perfective form of 'to scratch ' is ambirrwunga-ny [amblrwuf)aip], and the Past Imperfective is ambirrwunga-rri [ambirwuf)ari]. The fi nal syllable of the Past Perfective is unstressed, and there is a palatal nasal coda. Gi ven these facts, if stress was the conditioning factor for *a > i, then the Past Perfective should be ambirrwungi-ny, with the final syllable having an Iii vowel. There are a number of verb paradigms, which do show this alternation, presumably reflecting the *a > i (Table 4.